Taint Me Slowly
by roardraco
Summary: "How about we talk about Damon Salvatore's weak spot for you then? I'm extremely interested in that." Klaus rests his chin on his closed fist as he studies the fuming witch sitting beside him. "You say he's protective? Would he try, and fail, to end my very existence for talking to you?" Post Season 3 AU. Bamon. Minor Klonnie.


**Taint Me Slowly**

**Rating: **M (for sexual situations and coarse language)

**Chapter One: **Intransigence Is All Around

**Playlist: **Leave My Body - Florence + The Machine

**BD**

In the end, Bonnie doesn't know exactly what she has done wrong. Her breathing is ragged and she sees stars behind her eyelids. The ground is hard beneath her back, aching where her shoulder has hit the rocks she had pushed to one side. A few minutes after the explosion her ears are still ringing. But the clearing is still. Not even the wind unsettles the leaves. This in itself makes her hair stand on end.

She struggles to sit up, her blistered palms scream out in agony when they support her weight. Bonnie's breath catches when her eyes adjust to the dark again.

The ceremony site is charred. The altar, a large sandstone slab, is blackened. Almost everything that had been on it is gone, probably burned too. The herbs have been reduced to ashes and only the stones remain. Bonnie twists to look behind her. The wreckage fans out around her, a dark circular smudge that doesn't extend beyond the protection of the salt line. Her eyes widen. The salt line is broken.

"Oh, _shit_."

A little bubble of fear threatens to overwhelm her, but she swallows it and tries to take logical stock of the situation. Bonnie quickly runs through the list of ingredients that were required for the creation spell. When she finds no fault with them, or with the incantation that she recited, the dark-haired witch really begins to panic. If she doesn't know what went wrong, how will she try to fix the problem?

Bonnie Bennett gets to her feet and gingerly touches the largest of the crystals on the stone altar. Immediately, she draws her hand back. The shiny green surface of the malachite is hot to the touch.

"The spell must have worked then." she murmurs to herself. "But it was too strong for me. That's why it broke through the protective circle."

She spends a few moments surveying the damage and searching her memory banks for a possible solution. In the end, she decides that a little perusal through her collection of grimoires will have to do.

"Thought I might find you here."

She whips around. It takes all of her self-control not to release an audible groan. Standing with his arms folded and a frown creasing is brow is the bane of her existence.

"Playing with fire, little witch?" Damon asks, his blue eyes intense and hypnotic. He can't compel her, but she always feels as though he is testing her walls.

Bonnie will not cave. She turns her back to him and tries to focus again.

"What are you doing out here, Damon?" she demands as she begins to gather together what remained of her supplies. Quickly, she shoves the red-hot stones into her backpack and takes her grandmother's grimoire into her arms.

"Oh, I don't know. Could it be perhaps that the minute I stepped out of my house I was attacked by some invisible thing that reeked of witchy magic?

Startled by his words, she finally gives him more than a passing glance. Damon Salvatore's hair is ruffled, not in the 'I just woke up after a fantastic round of sex' way, but more in the line of 'Fuck, I almost got my ass handed to me by some supernatural creature'. His clothing is ripped and his mouth is pulled into a tight line, eyes blazing with barely concealed irritation.

"Oh no." she murmurs, more to herself than to him.

Damon's eyes narrow. "So it did have something to do with you."

"Something went wrong. What went wrong? It's not supposed to be acting on its own."

"Bonnie!" She snaps her attention back to the vampire. "We can talk about this later. Right now, I want to get out the woods and go someplace that doesn't scream 'sitting ducks'."

BD

"Stefan." He knows without even checking that it is his brother. So worried, so broody. But doesn't he know that Damon always handles things? "Yeah, I got her. Almost there. So stop sending your angst my way. No, she hasn't told me what's going on yet. Guess you're going to have to leave Elena's side and come find out."

He hangs up and smirks in Bonnie's general direction. "Saint Stefan thought I wouldn't find you. He thought you might be _dead_."

Bonnie rolls her eyes. "I'm a lot tougher than any of you give me credit for."

"Oh, not me. I always give credit where credit is due."

"Yes, because you know I can knock you out before you even get a chance to open your mouth and toss me one of your infamous one-liners."

The rest of the drive is spent in silence. Bonnie's stomach coils into a tight knot of tension and she bites her lip worriedly. Damon casts her a few glances, wondering if he should be a little more worried seeing how the witch is so clammed up. He pulls up in front of the boarding house and they both hurry inside, neither of them mentioning the reason why they're moving like a bat out of hell.

Stefan still hasn't returned from what Damon calls his therapy sessions with newly turned Elena. So he gets comfortable, pours himself a glass of bourbon and settles into his seat to watch the uncomfortable and worried-looking witch. And possibly stir her up some more, because he's Damon Salvatore and his name is synonymous with angering testy Bennett witches.

"I take it then that the spell didn't work and you fucked up royally."

No response. She seems to find the floor more interesting than she does him. He supposes he'll have to step it up a notch.

"Didn't know you hated vampires so much that you'd actually let loose something that could kill off both your best friends. Wow. That's some loyalty."

He smirks in triumph when she glowers at him.

"What's your problem, huh?" she hisses. "Got bored of harassing Elena and decided to move on to me?"

He narrows his eyes at her, knowing as well as she does that Elena has pushed him away, yet again, in order to try to work out her feelings for the two Salvatore brothers while trying to deal with the vampirism that has been foisted onto her. And despite the distance that she decided to put between herself and Damon and Stefan, she is seeking Saint Stefan out more than she is him.

Bonnie knows she has hit a raw nerve and her lips pull back into a smile and she snorts. "Does it sting, Damon? Does it incense you to see your brother chosen over you _again?_ How does it feel to know that you're always going to be second best?"

"Just like you are with Jeremy?" he snaps back.

She supposes she deserved that and really the decent thing to do would be to apologize, and she would if it were anyone else, but this is _Damon_ _Salvatore_, and in the heat of the moment she seeks to shut him down quickly.

"What happened between Jeremy and me is none of your business." she says firmly.

He rolls his eyes at her, highly aware of the double standard she has presented to him. "Yeah, and what happened between Elena and me is none of _yours_."

"Sorry to burst your bubble, Damon, but it became my business ever since you and your brother swept into town, bringing all your bad mojo and supernatural baggage with you." She can feel her face growing hot with irritation at the thought of how much she has had to put up with because of her best friend and her unnatural obsession with these two charismatic men. "I've had to clean up your messes countless times and don't even get me _started_ on how much you're confusing Elena."

Damon's lips pull into a smirk. "So I'm giving you overtime with my supernatural hijinks. Does my little good witch Glinda need a break?"

She glares at him. "Watch it."

Damon smirks a little before polishing off the last of his bourbon, deciding not to take Bonnie's words too seriously, even though the truth in them grates like nails on a chalkboard. So he slips back into their routine with ease. "Or what, Bon-Bon? Are you going to give me a brain aneurysm again?" He widens his eyes in that way that always has Bonnie thinking at the back of her mind that he is positively unhinged and is a millisecond away from snapping.

"Who knows? I'm not feeling particularly generous today." she quips back. "So tread lightly, Salvatore."

"Sounds like you're on a serious power trip, little witch." Damon shoots her one of his trademark shit-eating grins. "I must say I like this side of you. The whole morality police act you had going was getting a bit tired."

Bonnie's lips tighten into a thin line. "Just leave me alone."

He raises his brows a little and settles back in the plush leather couch, eying her with some consideration. "So you can go ahead and run off? Nah. I'm not letting you out of my sight, Bonnie Bennett. Not until you tell me what the hell kind of witchy juju you were up to."

She swallows hard. Maybe it's time to fess up, she thinks to herself.


End file.
